Liberty mayor offers to pay to get team back in tournament

LIBERTY — In Liberty, the spillover continued from last week’s heated emergency session regarding a parks and recreation issue.

At Liberty’s monthly work session Monday night, two parks and recreation advisory board members resigned over not only last week’s decision, but the mayor’s attempt to pay the coordinator of a local youth basketball tournament to redo the schedules to include a previously banned team from Liberty.

The issue heated up during the time for citizen’s comments, a time when rarely a word is spoken. This time, former councilwoman and current parks and rec advisory board member Tracy Whatley addressed the council’s 3-1 vote last week to overturn a decision made by the advisory board to suspend a youth basketball team from tournament play as a result of the team defaulting on the rules of working concession and gate duties.

Whatley said the “mayor and board’s reaction to the conflict was an absolute fiasco.”

“The biggest issue at hand is the fact that you were obviously unaware of the purpose of the parks and rec advisory board,” she said, then referring council members to their town’s ordinances, quoting the purpose is to “consult with and advise the parks and rec director.”

“By setting a precedent in calling an emergency meeting to override your own department head and town manager, you are treading in dangerous territory,” she said. “You basically issued a public vote of no confidence for your own employees and insulted the advisory board by not being knowledgeable of our role and purpose.”

Whatley then turned her attention to Mayor Terry Caviness.

“I am also disturbed with several of your comments this previous week. The purpose of hearing an issue is to listen to each side with an open mind and then make a decision,” she said. “When you notified advisory board members of the emergency meeting, you described the purpose as ‘to recant the advisory board’s decision of suspending a team from the tournament.’ This indicates that your opinion was already formed.”

A main spokesperson on the council at the emergency meeting, councilmember Vickie Stevenson, was then addressed regarding some of her comments.

“Ms. Stevenson, you suggested that people just go to the local Starvin Marvin to get their nabs and close down the concession stand. That goes directly against what you stated about putting the children first. Manning those concession stands allows children to play free of charge. It funds equipment and uniforms. It pays for referees and umpires and it prevents residents from paying higher taxes.

“I would also like to say that in all the time I have spent in this room, I have heard a lot of ludicrous comments, but your suggestion to withdraw all Liberty teams from their tournaments if this one particular team could not play was the most asinine suggestion I have ever heard.”

Whatley then tendered her official resignation from the parks and rec advisory board, and went on to tell the council what convinced her to resign.

“I cannot in good conscience work for a board and mayor who are willing to undermine their own department head and town manager, not to mention address an issue in a public forum without having the sufficient knowledge of the issue,” she said. “But it was learning over the weekend of some very disturbing behavior that sealed my decision.”

Whatley informed council that at various tournament locations in the county, it was being freely discussed that the Liberty mayor had called Trent Flinchum, coordinator of the Coleridge tournament, where the team would have played had they not been suspended, and offered Flinchum money to re-schedule the tournament games to include the Liberty team.

“I’m not saying what your intentions were, but the perception opens up the town to a lot of negative feedback,” Whatley said.

Caviness explained his reasoning behind the monetary offer.

“He told me he’s a volunteer and will have to take time off work to fix the schedule and I was perfectly willing to pay him for his time,” Caviness said. “I wouldn’t have a problem to pay him for his time and I would do it again.”

In a phone interview prior to Monday night’s meeting, Flinchum said he was called at home Wednesday night. Flinchum volunteers his time with the Coleridge parks and recreation department and does not receive pay for the services he performs.

“Wednesday night around 9:45, I received a phone call from Terry Caviness telling me the board had overturned the decision of the parks and rec and I told him I am a volunteer and would have to take time off work to fix the schedule and I wasn’t going to do it. Caviness told me he understood I don’t get paid but that Liberty was in a big uproar and he had to get this situation settled,” Flinchum said. “Then he told me he couldn’t write me a check for a thousand dollars or anything but that he could pay me several hundred dollars for my time.”

Flinchum said that he told Caviness he would have to call him back and Flinchum made a few phone calls to other people on the booster board before calling Caviness back.

“I told him I am not for sale and that he couldn’t bribe me and he said he wasn’t trying to bribe me and wasn’t trying to buy me,” Flinchum said. “I said, ‘Anytime you’re willing to lay money on the table to change something, to me that’s a bribe.’ ”

Caviness explained to council and to those present at the Monday night meeting that he was simply offering to compensate Flinchum for his time and in no way was his offer a bribe.

“If the guy perceived it that way, it becomes an issue,” Town Attorney Bill Flowe said, “and all we can say is that’s not the way you meant it, put it on as something that happened and move on to the next issue.”

Town Manager Roger Davis said after the meeting that he felt sure Caviness did not make the financial offer as a bribe.

Whatley used the example to hammer home her point regarding the perception of his offer of money to Flinchum stating that if “it walks like a duck, and looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

Advisory Board member Karen Scotton of Staley then approached council and officially turned in her resignation from the board as well, saying she would continue to support the parks and rec program but couldn’t serve a council that did not support the board — minus Shane Isley, referring to the one council member that voted to back the advisory board.

Advisory member Jimmy Parker also addressed the board, calling the board’s actions of last week a “slap in the face” to the advisory board. He encouraged council members to attend a ballgame and become involved with the program.

“Instead of strengthening the parks and rec program, you have hurt it by losing two outstanding advisory board members,” he said.

In closing, Caviness said that the board had been faced with a chain of events that they never had experienced before with this issue.

“We may not have found the right solution, but we thought it was right and hopefully we all learned from it. There is no right answer here,” he said. “Wherever we go from here, this board needs to be more involved in parks and rec programs so when somebody does complain, we have the right answers.”